The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - a weekend with Hobbits, Orcs, Elves and Ents

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
9/2/16 The Fellowship of the Ring, Best Makeup, Best Original Score, Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography, 2001, #51 AFI
9/3/16 The Two Towers, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, 2002
9/4/16 The Return of the King, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects, 2003

Before I start, I feel like I need to clarify that I actually saw all three movies, when they were released, in the theaters. This is not one of my 'Johnny come lately' moments (I tend to admit that right away). I read the trilogy and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien many years ago, and although I am not one of those people who read and re-read books over and over again, it made a huge impression on me, back to the first time I ever heard The Hobbit. My fourth grade teacher, Mr. Rounds (much gratitude to him for being one of the best teachers ever), used to read to us when we came back in from lunch, I think it was meant to calm us down after pretty intense kickball games. I fell in love with the story, watched the animated film, listened to an older cousin as he showed me his map of Middle Earth and explained Elvish to me; it was a little while before I was able to get into reading the books for myself, but when I did, I was so sad when it was over. Tolkien had an incredible ability to create a universe with so much detail you felt it was real; characters that came alive with their heroism, humor and frailty; and a story line where a character, no matter how large, small, magical or mortal, has a role to play. SO when I heard these movies were going to be made back in the early 2000s, I was ecstatic, but nervous. How could anyone put onto a screen what Tolkien had created in my mind? I probably don't need to tell you, but Peter Jackson not only did it once, but three times.

Each film corresponds to one of the trilogy, there is no doubling up (or tripling up) like Jackson did for The Hobbit. Jackson filmed all three movies at the same time, or consecutively, or put another way, he didn't wait years between each film; I think this helped with the continuity of the movies, the actors weren't 5 or 10 years older. Ian Holm is featured as Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit who starts it all in The Hobbit and Elijah Wood is his nephew Frodo. In The Hobbit, Bilbo brought back a magical ring, stolen from Gollum/Smeagol; The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the story of the return and ultimate destruction of the ring. Frodo inherits the ring from Bilbo and when Gandalf determines that it is best for the ring to be destroyed, Frodo sets off with his friends Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin), Pippin Took (Billy Boyd) and Merry Brandybuck (Dominic Monaghan). Along the way, they meet Strider/Aragorn (Viggo Mortenson), Boromir (Sean Bean), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli the Dwarf (John Rhys-Davies), among many, but this is the 'fellowship of the ring'. The best bet for success is to split of the group, and the story branches off into three main parts: Frodo and Samwise; Merry and Pip; and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli; Gandalf appears when needed. There is way too much to try and recap here, and I'm not even going to try; besides, you probably already know or you haven't read or seen the movies and I'm not going to ruin it for you.What you do need to know is that there is a lot of suspense, incredible effects (I mean, it won the Oscar three times for Best Visual Effects), battle scenes that will have you swinging your imaginary battleaxe, and some humor, usually found in the banter between Legolas and Gimli or with Pippin and Merry. If you read the blog regularly, you may know that I tend to be biased against long movies unless there is a point. Well, these are not short, by any stretch, in fact the last of the trilogy is over three hours, and I did NOT care. I didn't want them to end. There are times I didn't like the pacing of the different plot lines because I didn't want to leave Aragorn and the others to go wandering with Frodo and Sam, but then I got back into it, other times I was less interested in Merry and Pippin, but then the Ent (I love the Ents), Treebeard, appears and I'm caught up again; I hated the battles because the 'good guys' were always facing overwhelming odds, but then, you know, magic would happen, and then I didn't want the battles to end. Seriously, Jackson takes you on one helluva roller coaster ride and you don't want to get off. This might have been the perfect storm as far as movies go, because I think the cast is perfect, I can't imagine anyone else as Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, etc. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Andy Serkis as Gollum who broke ground as a motion-capture actor, in fact there was some talk that he should have been nominated for an Oscar, or maybe a special Oscar, for his performance. The main cast is superb, and the supporting cast is also just amazing, with Cate Blanchett as Lady Galadriel, Hugo Weaving as Lord Elrond, Christoper Lee as Saruman, and the list goes on.

I really can't say if the movies were 100% faithful to the books, to my recollection, they were faithful enough for me; there are people who can speak to that better than I. I just know the movies and books are absolutely magical. My complaint or what I take issue with is that the movies are shown on cable just about every 90 days or so. I just think that dilutes everything, and unless they show it without commercials (insert HUGE belly laugh), they are making them LONGER, or speeding up the film to make it shorter (or whatever the technical term is). BOO! I had the DVDs (thanks friends for not charging an overdue fee) and it was perfect (well, perfect was on the big screen, but this worked). I think I will put the books on the reading list and let Tolkien work his magic again.

This probably isn't my typical review, but I really didn't know how to review these epics that I love so much. Maybe that's the review? At least it's better than the movies that get the one sentence review, right?